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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26835145">The pain inside</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/WonderlandGirlXx/pseuds/WonderlandGirlXx'>WonderlandGirlXx</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Descendants (Disney Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Divergence - Descendants 2 (2017), Eating Disorders, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Movie: Descendants 2, Other, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Harm</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:06:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,412</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26835145</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/WonderlandGirlXx/pseuds/WonderlandGirlXx</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What if instead of running away Mal turned her pain against herself. Will her friends be able to help her work through her own self hatred and feel happy again?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ben/Mal (Disney: Descendants), Evie &amp; Jay &amp; Mal &amp; Carlos de Vil, Evie &amp; Mal (Disney), Jay/Carlos de Vil</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The pain inside</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hi, so this is a rewrite of a story that I wrote on fanfiction years ago but it’s sucked so hopefully this is better. There will hopefully be at least four chapters.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mal burst into her room throwing her bag onto her bed and sinking to the floor. The past few weeks had been some of the hardest in her life and she had never felt more alone while being surrounded by people in her life. </p>
<p>At the start it hadn’t been so bad; she had missed a few pieces of homework because she hadn’t had the time to finish them, she had felt frustrated and stressed but nothing she hadn’t dealt with a billion times before. The problem came when missing a few pieces of homework spiraled into not finishing most of them which then led to her missing meetings, hanging out with her friends, a date with Ben and most recently meals and sleep. She didn’t mean to forget things but her head was so busy all the time that she simply couldn’t keep up with everything and over time more and more of her thoughts were taken over by intrusive or self depreciating ones. She started to not want to eat because why would Ben want to date someone who was a mess and was fat. She couldn’t sleep at first because her mind kept her lying awake late into the night but then she stopped trying because she didn’t deserve to sleep if she couldn’t finish her work on time.</p>
<p>She felt incredibly overwhelmed by the amount of pressure on her. No one understood how she felt. Her friends didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong and when she became snappy and irritable, they became more and more distant. Her and Ben barely had time to talk about anything other than the cotillion and when they did manage to find five minutes to spend together one of them was always called away. She couldn’t handle it anymore. She felt like she was slowly being shattered from the inside out; she knew that Ben would never want someone who was broken. He deserved better than her. </p>
<p>To make matters worse, she was continuously followed by cameras and people with a billion questions. She could never show how she was feeling for fear that the whole kingdom would see the broken girl inside of her. She has tried talking to Ben about the cameras but he was, as always, too busy to really pay attention to what she was saying or do anything about it. She even tried to talk to Evie about her stress about the constant barrage of the press but she was too busy sewing dresses and simply brushed Mal’s stress off as pre-cotillion jitters.</p>
<p>Mal had reached a breaking point. Her head was too loud and too hurtful and she needed to get out of it no matter what. She walked into her bathroom and pulled up a loose piece of flooring, bringing out a small box containing a handful of stolen knives and broken razors alongside some band-aids and bandages. When she left the isle she had given up cutting for a long time; there wasn’t really anything that pushed her enough to fall back onto those habits but she kept the box hidden where Evie wouldn’t find it because no matter how she tried she could never bring herself to get rid of the box. </p>
<p>She had been cutting again for quite a while now; it was the only way that she could get out of her head, even if she was just exchanging one type of pain for another. It felt like for once she could take a breath of air before being plunged back into the murky waters of her thoughts again. She carefully placed the blade on her skin and pushed down, breaking the barrier between her flesh and the air and took a deep breath before letting out a deep sigh, a single tear falling down her cheek over the layers of make-up that buried her face. <br/>As she sat there on the bathroom floor, she remembered the conversation between her and Evie had had a week prior when she asked for long sleeves on her dress. She always wore long sleeves with her daily outfits, choosing to cover up any short sleeved tops with her leather jacket or a pair of sleeveless gloves. No one had seen any of her cuts and she wanted to keep it that way. Evie was a bit suspicious about the sleeves as it was coming towards the beginning of the summer months but when Mal told her the cotillion was on a boat and there would probably be a sea chill evie went along with it. </p>
<p>However Evie didn't fail to notice that Mal was a lot thinner recently and had been skipping meals.What Mal didn’t know was that Evie was getting very worried about Mal. At first she thought nothing of it, thinking that Mal was just in one of her occasional grumps but as time went on and Mal became more withdrawn and started to look frailer and frailer as the days went on she started to realise something was really wrong with her best friend. She had been snowed under by a mountain of requests for the royal cotillion but she vowed to herself that after class that afternoon she would confront Mal about it and find out what the problem really was.</p>
<p>Mal was starting to rearrange the items in her box so that she could clean up her arm when she heard the door of their room open; she hadn’t expected Evie to be back so early as she usually booked her dress fittings for straight after class and kept the things in one of the sewing classroom. She knew that Evie would know she was there as she had left her bag laying on the floor but she hoped that Evie was just there to grab something and leave again. Sadly luck was not on her side as Evie called out to her.</p>
<p>“Mal are you in there? We need to talk.”<br/>Mal felt like something was pushing on her chest. She tried to call out to Evie, to tell her she would be out in a minute or two but she couldn’t get enough air to talk. The tightening feeling in her chest got stronger when she realised that in her distress she hadn’t locked the bathroom door and she was too far away to lock it from where she was sitting.</p>
<p>“Mal are you okay? I’m coming in okay?”<br/>Mal didn’t have time to call out before Evie pushed the door open, gasping and rushing over to her when she saw Mal slumped on the floor in front of the tub, struggling for breath and with blood dripping down her arms and tears dripping down her face. Before Mal had even fully comprehended that Evie was next to her, she was taking the bandages and a damp cloth for Mal and starting to clean up her arms, pulling the shaking girl against her gently. Mal started to calm down a little when she realised that Evie wasn’t mad at her, just extremely worried. The weight that was suffocating her lifted slightly and she gulped in the oxygen, trying to match her breathing with Evie’s. When Evie had finished bandaging her arm she wrapped her arms around the girl and waited until her crying quietened down into little sniffles.<br/>"I'm s-so s-s-sorry Evie"</p>
<p>Next she walked mal into their room and sat them both down on mal's bed.<br/>" I just want to know what's making you feel like this mal. Your not eating, You are isolating yourself and you have been hurting yourself. Is it about your mother, is something happening here at school, is it Ben?”</p>
<p>Mal then sat and poured out her problems to evie, telling her how she was struggling and that she wasn't good enough and didn't deserve to be in auradon. Evie just sat listening, her heart breaking as she realised just how much hidden pain her friend was in. Finally mal finished and evie told her they were going to fix it together and got mal to change into her pyjamas and go to sleep as it was now late in the evening and finally she sat down on her own bed listening to mal's breathing as she slept.</p>
<p>Evie didn't really know what was going to happen now other than that it was going to be hard but she was going to help her best friend no matter what happened.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hope you all enjoyed<br/>Leave a comment or kudos and let me know what you want to see next<br/>Wonderland Girl</p></blockquote></div></div>
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